September 24, 1999

'Subtext' airs Yale hypocrisy
Matthew Marchant Daily Texan Staff

Are you tired of the corporate mentality infecting the morality and societal responsibility of our nation's universities? Laura Dunn, a master's student in UT's Department of Radio-Television-Film, addresses this issue by highlighting the glaring disparity between the mission of an Ivy League university and the reality of its actions in her engrossing documentary The Subtext of a Yale Education.

Cinematexas film- THE SUBTEXT OF A YALE EDUCATION Director: Laura Dunn Screening: Tonight at 9:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3:30 p.m. in the Texas Union Theater with University Inc.

The film serves as a chronicle of the difficult labor struggle between the primarily lower-class Yale staff workers' unions and the elite Yale administration and board of trustees. At the time, the unions (some including third-generation Yale employees as members) were attempting to prevent Yale from hiring outside subcontracting that would take jobs out of New Haven.

In the film, we see the administration resisting the union objectives and eventually winning out, with the unions taking only a guarantee of wages from the bargaining table. This film shows that the behavior and attitudes of the Yale administration result in a breach of its self-imposed responsibility by teaching students the subtle lessons of personal and societal apathy.

Though Yale is a non-profit corporation that by definition is required to do what is in its fiduciary interest, Dunn explains, "Yale has a different moral imperative than usual corporations because it is elite and sets precedents that are followed around the globe."
Throughout the filming of Subtext, Dunn faced evasive and uncooperative actions by the Yale administration, who deemed her project "political, and therefore not art." Dunn was questioned many times by the administration regarding her motives and found it very difficult to obtain student responses to the controversy, even though picket lines had formed on campus.

Dunn feels that the same apathy that the film shows to be so prevalent at Yale also exists at the University, and is a widespread problem around the nation. As the film points out, the juxtaposition of Yale's idealistic and community-minded mission with its fiduciary duties as a corporation results in the societal responsibilities of the university being virtually ignored in this case.

Subtext recently won an award for best documentary at the prestigious National Student Film Festival in New York and continues to gain momentum as a very important work. It comes to Austin as part of the McCollege World Tour, which is trying to provoke discussion about the corporatization-of-academia debate.

The film is short, 31 minutes, but it is very effective in the message and scenario it depicts. Because of the subject matter, as well as the skillful manner in which it is presented, it is an extremely interesting film whether or not you agree with its message.